Coordination and expertise foster legal textualism

Abstract

A cross-cultural survey experiment revealed a dominant tendency to rely on a rule’s letter over its spirit when deciding which behaviors violate the rule. This tendency varied markedly across ( k = 15) countries, owing to variation in the impact of moral appraisals on judgments of rule violation. Compared with laypeople, legal experts were more inclined to disregard their moral evaluations of the acts altogether and consequently exhibited stronger textualist tendencies. Finally, we evaluated a plausible mechanism for the emergence of textualism: in a two-player coordination game, incentives to coordinate in the absence of communication reinforced participants’ adherence to rules’ literal meaning. Together, these studies (total n = 5,794) help clarify the origins and allure of textualism, especially in the law. Within heterogeneous communities in which members diverge in their moral appraisals involving a rule’s purpose, the rule’s literal meaning provides a clear focal point—an identifiable point of agreement enabling coordinated interpretation among citizens, lawmakers, and judges.

Moral appraisals guide intuitive legal determinations.

“…Still, convenience samples recruited on Prolific have been found to reproduce effects on judgment and decision-making previously observed in studies involving nationally representative samples (Peer et al, 2017). Relatedly, the impact of moral reasoning on rule application documented in the present work has been observed in lay samples throughout numerous countries and in various languages (Hannikainen et al, 2022). Together, these limitations call for further research to investigate whether our current findings arise, for example, in nonindustrialized and small-scale societies and in reaction to more realistic stimuli (e.g., that incorporate a broader range of cultural cues).…”

“…Taken in conjunction, Studies 4–6 reveal a broader pattern: legal judgments integrate various morally relevant cues, including the agent’s epistemic state and the outcomes of their behavior—and these effects arise already in people’s intuitive determinations (i.e., under time pressure). The opportunity to reflect appears to strengthen the effect of literal meaning on rule application (see also Hannikainen et al, 2022)—resulting in a shift toward textualist determinations over time.…”

Comparative judgement for experimental philosophy: A method for assessing ordinary meaning in vehicles in the park cases

“…These findings were further generalised and replicated across fifteen different countries, with multiple distinct languages, as well as demonstrating that legal experts show this inclination even more strongly, by Hannikainen et al (2022). While this is informative for the textualism versus purposivism debate, the study focused more on rules than on ordinary meaning of terms.…”

On abstract goals’ perverse effects on proxies: The dynamics of unattainability

“…They show up in history (Scott, 1985), fables and art (Da Silva & Tehrani, 2016;Uther, 2004), childhood (Opie & Opie, 2001), and interpersonal conflict (Bridgers, Taliaferro, Parece, Schulz, & Ullman, 2023). Such letter-versus-spirit of the law concerns are also often discussed in the legal realm (Hannikainen et al, 2022;Isenbergh, 1982;Katz, 2010). But such concerns are not with scalar proxies standing in for a true but unknowable goal.…”